{"id":5251,"date":"2013-01-11T03:06:33","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T08:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=5251"},"modified":"2013-01-11T03:16:15","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T08:16:15","slug":"loving-the-enemy-in-the-rest-room-emotional-healing-through-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2013\/01\/loving-the-enemy-in-the-rest-room-emotional-healing-through-dreams.html","title":{"rendered":"Loving the enemy in the rest room: emotional healing through dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
“Kisses” urinals designed by by Meike van Schijnde<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I was in my 20s, I had a terrible enemy, a man with whom I fought many battles. The balance of blame is not something I choose to determine now; each of us was no doubt at fault. Years after we had parted company and the conflict period was over in regular life, I still dreamed we were fighting. One night, I dreamed I was in a men’s room, cleaning up, when my old adversary entered.<\/p>\n

When he saw me, he puffed up like a human bull frog, bigger and bigger until he looked like a demon. In the dream, I realized I had a choice. I could regard him as a malevolent demon with which I needed to do battle, or I could do something else. I chose that something else. There, in the men’s room (of all places!) I said to the worst enemy I ever had, “I love you.”<\/p>\n

No sooner had I spoken these words, than the air came out of him. He deflated like a punctured balloon. There, on the floor in front of me, in place of the man (and the demon) was a pink, innocent baby.<\/p>\n

I rushed to the sink. I needed to throw up. As I purged, I saw that what was streaming from my mouth was a mess of rusty nails and rusty tacks, dozens, maybe hundreds of them. I knew, in the dream, that these embodied the hateful and harmful thoughts that had been projected against me, years ago. I felt cleansed and released, and rose from the dream, certain that something had been healed and resolved for good and all.<\/p>\n

I never had any problems again with that old enemy, in dreams or in regular life. Because dream experiences are transpersonal as well as personal, and because thoughts are actions that can reach people at a distance, I like to think that the healing power of my dream reached my old adversary as well, and did him some good.<\/p>\n

Since dreaming can also be time travel, it is not impossible that such healing power could be transferred back to younger selves in their own time.<\/p>\n

My men’s room dream did not start as a lucid dream in the sense of being one of those dreams in which you know you are dreaming. The scene in the men’s room was absolutely real to me, as were the irruption into the scene and the subsequent energetic transformations of my old enemy. My dream self may not have been “lucid” by current definitions, but he was fully conscious in a more important sense. He was fully aware that, in a conflicted situation, he had the power of\u00a0choice<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in my 20s, I had a terrible enemy, a man with whom I fought many battles. The balance of blame is not something I choose to determine now; each of us was no doubt at fault. Years after we had parted company and the conflict period was over in regular life, I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,24,5,46,19,7,12],"tags":[320,1503,68],"class_list":["post-5251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-conscious-dreaming","category-dream-interpretation","category-dreams","category-healing","category-healing-dreams","category-lucid-dreaming","category-meaning-of-dreams","tag-emotional-healing","tag-rest-room-dreams","tag-robert-moss-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nLoving the enemy in the rest room: emotional healing through dreams - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2013\/01\/loving-the-enemy-in-the-rest-room-emotional-healing-through-dreams.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Loving the enemy in the rest room: emotional healing through dreams - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I was in my 20s, I had a terrible enemy, a man with whom I fought many battles. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5415,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5251\/revisions\/5415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}